Top Skills Most Agents Are Missing

Your real estate skills determine your success, but they could also be your downfall if left undeveloped. In a competitive market, there’s little room for skill development while managing your business, leading to anxiety and reluctance to try new things. This mindset can perpetuate the belief that certain tasks will always be difficult.

Let me clarify this: not everything should be difficult or uncomfortable if you have the know-how and confidence to handle it effectively. Let’s talk about three crucial real estate skills that are holding agents back at various career stages.

In this blog, we’ll delve into these real estate skills for a new real estate agent, novice, or seasoned agent. Let’s start off with what exactly I’m talking about when I say “skills.”

What Are the Elements of Skills in Real Estate?

I know… You already know what skills are. But when have you taken the time to break down what they really mean? Doing this can show you how to develop them. To make it very simple, a skill is the combination of two things: Your knowledge of how to perform a task in the most effective way possible.

Your confidence and ability to perform the task in your chosen way on command.

Understanding the essence of skills is vital for your development. Simply put, a skill is the combination of knowledge on performing a task effectively and the confidence and ability to execute it. While knowledge can be acquired through trial and error or guidance from experienced individuals, confidence and ability improve through practice.

But I can’t say this enough… DON’T PRACTICE ON YOUR CLIENTS! You only have one reputation, and every interaction affects it. Professional training programs are recommended for the simultaneous development of knowledge and skills. Remember, skills aren’t something you’re naturally good at; they require refinement and can deteriorate from learning bad habits.  

What Skills Are Needed for Real Estate? Skills needed in real estate include effective communication, negotiation, marketing, time management, adaptability, problem-solving, local market knowledge, technology proficiency, networking, and integrity. Let’s take this one step further and talk about the fundamentals of these skills for real estate agents.

Common Real Estate Skill Deficiencies.

The Foundations - Nothing will slow down your progress like learning the foundations incorrectly – or in many cases not learning them at all. Learning the foundations correctly, or lack thereof, significantly impacts your progress in real estate.

When you were getting your license, how much did they teach you about running a business, doing effective real estate marketing, becoming competent at sales, and managing your time? I’m willing to bet, pretty much nothing.

Traditional real estate education often neglects crucial aspects like business management, effective marketing, sales competence, and time management. In today’s competitive market, there’s little room for new agents to make mistakes in real estate.

Now, I know it seems like cheating to call all these foundations one skill because they encompass just so much, but a large part of this has to do with when these skills are learned and how they’re integrated together into a routine and a mindset. Here are just a few of the elements of your foundational skills:

• Understanding how to control your time
• Mastering the art of the buyer consultation
• Comprehensive annual reviews
• Host open houses that are successful
• Handling objections to close deals confidently
• Creating real estate social media videos for brand growth

But the main reason I count them all together is because of the solution I’m about to announce which covers all of these and more… Stick around for it!

Phone Prospecting. -  While the foundations come in first place because you absolutely can’t start making decent money until you have some grasp on them, phone prospecting is the hands-down No. 1 most common issue among all agents.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve found some other lead gen channel that’s working – if there’s a fear of the phone and you’re not making your calls then you’re not reaching your potential. The obvious culprit here is a crisis of confidence. It can be awkward to call strangers or people you barely know. It’s uncomfortable to ask for an appointment, and it can be a real confidence killer to be hung up on or to sense someone’s annoyance.

But it’s only awkward/uncomfortable/draining if you haven’t developed the skills for it. And please keep in mind that developing these skills is a part of your job. You might not like it, but it’s part of the career path you’ve chosen. Remember here that confidence comes from experience, and still, it’s only one-half of what forms a skill.

You need the knowledge of exactly what you’re going to say and the training to anticipate what they might say next. This is what will allow you to steer the conversation in the way you want it to go. Once you have that, confidence will come naturally, and phone calls will become predictable commission.

Leverage - The longer you’re in this business, the more you’re going to want to start delegating tasks to free you up to focus on the most important – and rewarding – aspects of the role. And that means building a team around you.

Think about it… wouldn’t it be lovely if you could work less and make exponentially more money? How about going on vacation while your business continues to run smoothly without you? These are just a few of the incredible benefits of having the right team. But the right team isn’t easy to build, especially when you first get started.

After years of mastering the fundamentals of real estate skills, becoming fearless on the phones, and raising their annual commissions, many experienced agents believe that they know it all just to find themselves completely lost again when it becomes necessary for them to expand. Recruiting is a different ballgame than any other aspect of the business.

On the one hand, you want to take the time to find the perfect people for every position and train them properly so that they can fulfill their roles. On the other hand, you don’t want your business to completely collapse while you take the time to do this and go completely bankrupt on paying people you can no longer afford. It seems like a Catch-22, right? It doesn’t have to be if you know how to:

• Implement the right recruitment strategies
• Find the right employee lead sources
• Build a strategic recruiting plan
• Identify the best talent
• Craft an efficient onboarding process

Let’s go back to what I said at the beginning… Pride and ignorance are the opposite of confidence, and they can prevent us from recognizing where we really stand. It’s embarrassing to admit to ourselves that we didn’t master all the fundamentals when we first started, so sometimes we’d rather blame the market than admit to our own lack of skills.

It’s easier to say that we don’t have the time and energy to make our calls than to admit that it’s a lack of confidence holding us back. And it’s easy to say that you’ve become successful on your own, so you don’t need help in becoming a leader. These are all excuses that are holding you back. So, I challenge you to be honest with yourself.

Strength and Courage,

Wade